Azure

Azure

March 21, 2012

It’s that wafer ash
set next to the hardy Dutchman’s pipe
that reminds me of the unlikely sight
we caught on hotel cable TV:
Al Schön espousing orange wines.
Two decades ago,
he was the school’s athlete-Platonist.
And now we’re all as louche
and brown around the edges
as this Baronne Prevost.
The Julia Child,
the Rise and Shine
—these rosebuds exist
to ornament fulsome christenings.
So it happens today that Azure
is introduced toddling
in a glade of bamboo
topping out at a whisper on the hillside.
“Azure, meet our Gray.”
“Gray, Azure.”

Ange MlinkoAnge Mlinko is poetry editor of The Nation and the author of Marvelous Things Overheard (FSG). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Randall Jarrell Award for criticism, and teaches poetry at the University of Florida.